These words like 'pneumonia' and 'mnemonic' came from greek. And not only in english they came - that's the key point. When these greek words with diphthong 'eu' have adopted in russian language it receives a strong 'v' sound in place of greek 'u'. So, the 'pneumonia' sounds like 'pnevmonia' in russian, but 'mnemonic' is still 'mnemonika'.

I've done some research on google and yes, it's μνημονικά and πνευμονία.

Actually "halfpenny" works for me because the "l" is missing in the pronunciation of "half" anyway, so in English-English "halfpenny" only loses the "f" as there there was no "l" to lose. I would say something like "haaf" for "half" normally but "halfpenny" is like "haypenny".

"giraffe" has an "f" at the end when I say it. Can you say it without one? Wouldn't that just be "gira"?

Does v in "revving" really count? In my books it's the same as the double l in "falling" - the two letters in the double are not pronounced separately from each other, but they act to disambiguate the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.

I'd expect "reving" to rhyme with "leaving".

Bringing things back to Perl, the parentheses are "silent" (useless) here:

I was also su-prised by the idea that surprise's first r is silent. I've always pronounced both r's for as long as I can remember (which nowadays is about 10 minutes).

I wonder if it's a regional thing? My mother was from the (US) midwest. Most of the folks out there talk about the nation's capital as "Warshington DC". In which case, there's the on-again, off-again r for you...again.

I think most people would make a distinction between words that have been adopted into mainstream English usage, and foreign language words that we use because there isn't an English word. Hajj isn't a generic word that can be used for any other purpose. It has a specific meaning, and it is inappropriate - even offensive - to use it in any other context. I would never "go on a hajj to Bletchley Park", for instance, but I would "go on a pilgrimage" to it. So while technically it is "a word that is used in the English language", it's very much a borderline case. Although it's legal in Scrabble, so maybe I'm wrong.

But there is no silent O in "possum" though it is possible there might be a missing one, if you consider possum=opossum. It is quite common for words to lose letters over time, like how the Latin "fenestra" became the French "fenętre".
Can you tell I do tech support for a dictionary?

You can blame Bill The Bastard (sorry, I meant William the Conqueror) for that. He brought a whole bunch of French words into English. The aristocracy spoke French, the normal commoners spoke Anglo-Saxon. That's why you get two names for most types of meat; mutton and lamb (which comes from l'angneau), ox and beef (from buf), etc.

Look closely and you'll find that English (even the version with Merriam and Webster's messed up spelling (color vs colour)) is an amalgamation of Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, German, Anglo, Saxon, Swedish, Norwegian and Chinese plus a whole bunch of other words borrowed from
around the old British Empire.

the choice of the word lamb curiously breaks that schema (which stays valid nearly everywhere else). It is believed to be a much older word from germanic/protogermanic roots, qf the German "Lamm", Dutch & Scandinavian languages "lam", Nedersaksisch "Laom" etc.

Just the other way round mutton is from French mouton, so you have been unhappily mixing the pair the wrong way up.

Cheers, Sören

Later addition: "Billy the Bastard" would indeed have been an appropriate and probably undisputed name for the young William, I learned.

The "z" is technically not silent in "rendezvous". "ez" as a whole forms the "é" sound, and neither letter on its own would sound that way. It's like English's "sh", but it's a vowel instead of a consonant. French has many such combinations.

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

I think to many Americans the first syllable of "serpent" has a noticiable "r" at the end whereas "surprise" doesn't, so that is what they mean by the missing r. To me they both have more-or-less the same first syllable, so I suspect I would sound like I am not saying the "r" in "serpent" to them as well.

As I said in another post on this thread the technical term is "rhotic" for the pronunciation which says the "r" in "serpent", "non-rhotic" where you don't. Wikipedia has an interesting article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents. Are you a non-rhotic speaker too?

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

According to Merriam-Webster, the "o" in opossum is optionally silent.

I'm not sure what to make of the pronunciation of opossum at dict.org, as I can't find a pronunciation guide there (maybe the "*" after the "O" means it's optional? - update: Nope, other examples show clearly it's just a delimiter between syllables).

I find it interesting that only the opossum "plays possum." I think perhaps the "o" is an invisible silent letter in that phrase :-)

I've changed my mind. I'd like to vote for the silent r in oh-so-many words in the standard English-English pronunciation. I can't call it British English because Scottish people often pronounce the r where the English don't. My dear departed Scottish father even said the r in "iron".

So my vote should have gone to the silent r that is a major feature of English-English pronunciation, the technical adjective being "non-rhotic".

Mertserger

PS I am fairly sure all the words in the poll would appear in any reasonable English dictionary so although they may have been borrowed from other languages they're English now. Someone once said: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

The bęte noire in this household over the years has always been the invisible, but sometimes rolled, R that results in "law and order" sounding like "laurrrrra ndoda". And since "ndoda" means "man" in several of the Nguni languages, it could be a valid name.

If I was allowed to vote for my least favourite silent letter, it would be the "b" in "debt". The original spelling in English was "dete" or "dett" but at some point an idiot decided that because it derives from the Latin "debere" (to owe) it should be given a silent "b" to show its origins.

As if English spelling and pronuciation are inconsistent enough without that!

There's a difference between "silent" and "pronounced differently" in the language it was borrowed/stolen from. "ll" => "y" and "j" => "h" (someone said something about a "silent" 'h' in some other spanish word elsewhere in this thread).

um, ...errr... -- for this speaker of "standard american" (which is not standard for all Americans) -- would you tell us which "t" in Atlantic is silent. Or is it the 't' in Atlantic's surname, "Ocean?"

My american collegue (born in Philadelphia) says Alantic City.He says that is correct. However today I have asked him this question, and he has responded:

In the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area the 't' tends to be pronounced as a 'd' when it is the first letter and silent when it is in the word. This is like the Italian accents from the different regions.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other